She looked happy, Will realised dully, and he was terribly afraid that he had left it too late.
Alice went into the kitchen and put the hyacinths into some water, bending to breathe in their heady perfume. ‘Coffee?’ she asked.
‘Thanks.’ Will wasn’t sure how to begin. He stood to one side and watched her moving around the kitchen. She hadn’t asked what he was doing there, but presumably she could guess, and surely they had known each other long enough for him not to need to dance around with polite conversation before coming to the point?
‘I’ve been wondering if you’d thought at all about what I said before you left,’ he said abruptly. ‘Have you decided what you want yet?’
Alice had sat on a chair and was pulling off her boots, but she stopped in the middle of unzipping the second one and smiled at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I have.’
‘I see,’ said Will bleakly. She had decided to stay in London, that was obvious. You didn’t buy flowers for a home you were about to leave.
‘Shall we go into the sitting room?’ Alice suggested before he could say any more, and she carried the tray into a bright room. It was cool and uncluttered, and Will sat gingerly on the edge of a cream sofa. She looked perfectly at home here. If this was her life, he wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t wanted to give it up for a rickety verandah and creaking ceiling fans.
Alice pushed the plunger into the cafetiere and poured out the coffee, wriggling her toes on the carpet. Will was so used to seeing her in shoes that the sight of her bare feet was strangely arousing, and he looked away.
‘What are you doing here, Will?’ she asked as she handed him a mug of coffee. ‘I thought you were going to wait for me to decide what I wanted to do?’
‘I was going to-I
Alice bit her lip. ‘Doesn’t she get on with Helen?’
‘Helen’s all right. She’s done her best. It’s not her fault that she’s not you,’ said Will. ‘The truth is that Lily and I are in a bad way. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t work properly…We don’t seem to be able to do anything but miss you.’
A wry smile touched his mouth. ‘I know this sounds like emotional blackmail, Alice, but it’s not meant to be that. It’s just that it suddenly seemed stupid to just sit out there and hope for the best. I couldn’t just watch my daughter getting quieter and quieter. I realised that if we wanted you back in our lives-and we do-I would have to do something to make it happen.
‘So I’ve applied for a job here in the UK,’ he told Alice. ‘It’s as a consultant with an engineering company, doing environmental impact assessments for their marine projects. I’d be based in the North, not London, but it’s a permanent job, and a good one. I’d still have to do research overseas, but it would be in short stints, so we could buy a house and settle down somewhere. Lily could go to school, and you could carry on with your career…’
Will stopped, realising that he was in danger of babbling. He looked at Alice, who was clasping her mug with a very strange expression on her face, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.
‘I suppose what I really came to ask you, Alice, was whether it would make any difference to your decision if I did get that job.’
Very slowly, Alice shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it wouldn’t make any difference.’
‘I see.’ The belief that deep down Alice still loved him had been keeping Will going through the last ghastly weeks. He knew that she was scarred by her restless childhood and he knew how important the idea of home was to her. Once he had made the decision to change his own career, he had thought that would solve the problem, but he could see now that it had been arrogant of him. Alice had never promised anything beyond the short term.
Somehow he managed a smile. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Now that I’ve seen you here, I can appreciate what this place means to you.’ He looked around the room, approving its simple, tasteful decor. ‘It’s nice here. You’ve obviously got a good life, and I know how important your career is to you. I hope you’ll find just the job you want,’ he added heroically.
‘It’s funny you should say that,’ said Alice, a smile hovering around her mouth. ‘I was offered the job of my dreams just a couple of days ago.’
‘Well…great,’ said Will heartily. Abandoning his coffee, he got to his feet. He wasn’t sure how he was going to tell Lily, but he would have to find a way. She had been happy to see her grandparents again. Perhaps he should think about moving to the UK anyway, just as Alice had once suggested. ‘Good luck then, Alice.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I should go and pick Lily up. It was good to see you again,’ he said, looking into Alice’s golden eyes for the last time. ‘And…Well, there doesn’t seem much more to say.’
He was turning for the door when her soft voice stopped him in his tracks. ‘Even if I tell you that I didn’t take the job?’ Very, very slowly, Will turned back. ‘You didn’t take it?’
Alice shook her head, her smile a little wavery. ‘You haven’t asked me what decision I made yet,’ she reminded him.
‘I thought…I assumed…’ he stammered as a tiny spark of hope lit in his heart. ‘You look so happy, so at home here.’
She tutted. ‘That’s not very scientific of you, Will. I’d have expected you to look at the evidence, not make assumptions on how you think I look.’
‘Evidence?’
Getting to her feet, Alice went over to the table and rummaged among some papers, pulling out a rectangular card. ‘Evidence like this,’ she said, putting it into a flabbergasted Will’s hand. ‘It’s a plane ticket,’ she told him unnecessarily. ‘Open it.’
‘It’s to St Bonaventure.’ Will lifted his head from the ticket to stare at her, a smile starting at the back of his eyes.
‘And it’s in my name.’ She took the ticket from him and tossed it back onto the table before turning back to him and taking his hand, smiling as his fingers closed convulsively around hers. ‘What does that evidence tell you, Will?’
‘Alice…’ Unable to find the words for how he felt, Will pulled her into his arms. He didn’t kiss her, he just held her very tightly, his eyes squeezed shut, his face pressed into her hair as he breathed in the scent of her, and felt the iron bands that had been gripped around his heart ever since she had driven off with Roger start to loosen.
‘I made my decision, Will.’ Alice turned her face into his throat and clung to him. ‘I chose happiness. I chose you.’
Will’s arms tightened around her even further, but she didn’t mind. ‘You were right about me looking happy,’ she went on, rather muffled. ‘I was happy because I’d just finished making all the arrangements to let this flat and could go back to you and Lily.’ ‘But Alice, this is your home,’ Will protested.
‘It was, but when I came back from St Bonaventure it wasn’t home any more,’ she said. ‘It was just a flat. For a while it seemed as if I didn’t have a home at all, and then I realised that I do. It’s just not bricks and mortar. Home is wherever you are.’
‘Alice…Oh, Alice…’ Will pulled back slightly so that she could turn her face up to his, and their lips met at last in a long, sweet kiss. He felt almost drunk with relief and happiness. He wasn’t sure quite how it happened, but his dream had just come true, and the proof of it was Alice’s lips beneath his, her arms around him, the softness and scent of her hair. ‘Tell me that again,’ he said raggedly when they broke for air.
‘I love you, Will. I think I’ve always loved you, but I was too stupid and afraid to realise how lucky I was to have found you.’ Lovingly, she traced the line of his cheek with her fingers. ‘I’ve walked away from your love three times now, and I don’t deserve to be given another chance, but, if you will, I promise I’ll never walk away again. I just want to be with you, and I don’t care where we are, or what we do, as long as we’re together.’
‘And you’re sure?’ asked Will as he bent to kiss her again, and she smiled against his lips.
‘Yes, this time I’m sure.’
‘What made you change your mind?’ Will asked much later when they were lying, lazily entangled, in Alice’s bed. He smoothed the hair tenderly from her face. ‘You were so insistent that you had everything you needed here.’
